Yes - Australian here. We started this, somehow.

I agree. I’d much rather if we simply banned personalised algorithmic feeds, for everyone. They’re the new smoking. They’re toxic to mental health and to society more broadly. They’re no good for adults or children - so no need for age checks for any of it.

YouTube and Facebook could still work. Just show the channels I’m subscribed to instead of whatever an AI thinks will drive me toward addiction. Even YouTube’s recommended “watch next” could survive. They’d just have to base the recommendations on what the viewer population as a whole enjoy instead of putting me personally in a bubble.

The personalised feeds is the whole point of their reason of being. No personalisation no profits. There just isn't a world where these huge companies can exist without personalised feeds. Meta platforms as well as YT would die and you would have instead something like Nebula which you pay for like Netflix but offers content creators content. Most people wouldn't pay for Nebula and so, you are back to the original point. People would put pressure to restore personalised feeds. Everyone supports these bans until they are the target of them.

This isn't a technological problem but a human one. The fundamental problem is that we haven't developed generalisable, scalable and profitable business models on the internet that aren't toxic.